Working on updating the web site & decorating at the same time. I'm worried....I fear we may not open at all this season,my illness has progressed more & I just can't get the work done. Still not sure if its gonna happen.

September 2, 2014

Well I had an August 27th shipping date on Velma & Evander & they arrived today. There was just a handful of people who had trouble with them working so we broke them out of the

Have added lots of new recipes, some I have been sitting on awhile, the rest are from being in search of things my crew like to eat! It's gonna take me awhile to shoot pictures but eventually I'll get them all in there. Hope you enjoy the variety.

I've had my brain, heart, skeleton & eye molds for so long & still have not tried them. Just bought the face and I got a skeleton face. I always run out of time the closer it gets to Halloween. Every year I say I'm gonna make them & every year I go searching for recipes. So here is my file of recipes some untried. For sure as I make each one I will add photos & my personal notes as to how it went....ya know tried & true........but at least they are all in one spot.

Gore Goodies 7 the Brains.....created this page to house several different recipes I've collected online to make the infamous Brains for our parties. Recipes in place but have to shoot photos, ( ain't gonna happen fast for sure).

Greetings to all the families that visited Collinwood841 for Halloween 2013! Thank You so much for coming. Plans are already being made to bring you a bigger Collinwood841 this year. We hope you all had a good time last year & we wanted to let you know that we had a little over 400 Trick or Treaters & approx. 200 adults come through. For 2014 we are purchasing a head counter from Laniers so we have an exact count of how many come through. We are glad to make Halloween something the whole family can enjoy!

The pictures once again will be in the albums. The photo's will be pictured in Picturetrail.com & the password to get in is "muffy7". The photo's of the families are in the albums along with some of the albums containing the decorated house. Hope you all had a good time and we look forward to seeing you Halloween night 2014!

Jerry, Debbie & Joe

2014We are finally getting started working on projects so I'll be adding photo's & instructions to the projects section.

August 2014Started working on updating the website. Starting in the food pages. Lots of lots of lots of photos to shoot for the recipe pages. Gonna take sometime.

August 2014Well greetings fellow haunters. I have finally returned from the dead. Yes I have been away from my site for sometime (2 yrs.) due to ongoing health issues which are still in progress. I'm going to be working on my site to get it cleaned up & updated. I fell behind both with my site & my group, the North Carolina Haunters Group & also the Online Building Group from the Halloween Forum. Hope to perhaps get things moving although I'm pretty slow these days.

Plans for 2014 & 2015 : To get as many odds & ends done as we can. I have many projects started that need to get done. Also we need to do more work on design of the funeral parlor, the cemetery, the gypsy tent & the Egyptian tent.

This is our cat Charlie who is 26, he said to wake himup Halloween Night! He is always part of my witchcostume....a broom & a black cat!

August 12, 2009Joey has diligently been working on getting that old sewing machine of my Grandmothers working so he can finish the Monks cloaks. He took the machine by his Dad yesterday, his dad was a professional commercial sewing machine technician, so we got her going now. Auntie is sending yards of material to help make the monks costumes. Watch the monks section in projects.

August 2014Okay!! Joey is getting the sewing machine out & I think the monks costumes may actually make an appearance this year. Wehave 2 cloaks done & 4 more to sew. As soon as we get some work done around here we'll set up the machine & start sewing these guys outfits & start building them.

October 2014 UPDATEWell I been pretty sick these last 2 months so we are behind terribly. Monks cloaks......look for them 2015

Above link takes you to our coffin contest page....it is under construction.

May 16, 2008Halloween Forum presents the "Coffin Contest". Hey, Hey we won! Thank You to everyone that voted for us!

August 12, 2014Added the witches bottles & jars page & more pictures of the creepy caramel apples in Projects 2007 - 2008 under Misc. Projects. Gonna try and make some more apples & rotten cotton candy. Want to add roaches, ants & spiders to the apples so we can use them in 3 different scenes, the witches lair, the cadaver cafe & in the Candy kitchen where the kids get their treats.

August 14, 2014The arch needs an overhaul for this season.

August 2014Cleaning the garage which has a million more things in it since 2009, has become a chore. There was an additional 5 years of buying stuff to add to the haunt....so now we really got a lot plus more is coming cause we have not started building the mummy dig yet & the cemetery needs major renovations & all new tombstones & such. Those flea markets, garage sales & auction houses really come in handy. As far as labels for candy bags, well we just run out of time every year & never seem to get around to making them anymore. They were a lot of work, the design, the printing & the cost of ink to make that many, then the cutting out, trimming & pasting them to each bag. Whew....when did I have that much energy.

So now we just hand candy out from the bowl. Last year we did not have time to make the brownies but we are gonna try this year. It takes awhile to bake & individually wrap over 600 brownies!

Witches hats have been out but need a major redo for season 2015.

2014 - North Carolina Haunters GroupI've decided to leave all this stuff from North Carolina haunters in tack. Due to my illness it just all kinda fell apart, but oh we had good times. Talking on the Halloween Board is one thing but getting together with these fine folks was just great! We shared a lot, we learned a lot & enjoyed each others company all having the most important thing in common.....the love of Halloween!! Hopefully we can pull this all together & start it up again some time in the future. After 12 years of searching for a doctor that might just be able to help me, I finally found one. There is a lot of damage from the years of this condition but we are going to try & put me back together again. Its gonna take a lot of time, but there is always>>>>>>Next Halloween!!~

North Carolina Haunters

Photo's from Our "Make&Take"

July 25, 2009

The North Carolina Haunters met at Dave in the Graves house for a wonderful day of Halloween talk & the viewing of a lot of terrific props that Dave has built. We discussed what we were working on in getting ready for Halloween & also made plans for the August meet.

Well we are getting more & more photo's from our "Make & Takes", so Mr. Spookineer opened us an account in Photobucket & we will be storing some of the photos in there. The user name to get in is : NC-Haunters & the password is : halloween. This page was closed down.

April 22, 2009

Greetings All!! We are getting ready to have our 3rd North Carolina Haunters Group get together coming up May 2, 2009. As you know this is a newly formed group so we are working on how we'd like to run things. This meet is different & Mr. Spookineer had an idea of doing mini seminars. We also will be covering aging & weathering of tombstones. I'll be sure this time to get good photos.

The meet for tombstone building is coming up this Saturday. Its looking like we are gonna have a good size group & I will be sure to get plenty of pictures as I did not get any at the January meet cause we were having such a good time I forgot to grab the camera.

We had our 1st meet of the North Carolina Haunter Prop Building Group & what a good time we had. The meet was a party at my house where we ate hardy & talked about getting together & what we wanted to build in the future meets. Some of the members brought along things that they made which got everybody even more excited. Fun part is everybody had their own style of building things so I think we can learn a lot from each other. First official build is March 14th & we are starting out with an easier project.........tombstone building......I'll have pictures soon!

August 24, 2009

Well yesterday we got a major start on the start of things. The garage got cleaned, the organ got moved in the house & so did quite a few boxes of decorations. I've started work on my TOT bags, labels all done & getting glued on. The cloaks for the monks.....well the 1st one is finished now only 5 more to go. Witches hats all got the 1st layer of paper mache.

We would like to thank everyone that voted for us! Thank you to all the participants in the contest, to all the forum members that supported the contest, to Larry for coming up with this contest & to Rob from Body Bag for providing the 1st, 2nd & 3rd place prizes!

We Won!

Old Entries

June 21,2008

Added the bridal dress that will be worn for the funeral scene. Its in Projects 2008 - 2009 under "Wedding Party".

Found some folks on Craigs list that have corn stalks that we could cut, she said they are 6 - 8 ft. high. Just what I'm looking for! Going to get them tomorrow. Gonna feel like Fall(only its 96 degrees here but I can pretend!)

Halloween News 2014 - Don't miss this section, it has a little bit of this & a little bit of that but I tried to pick subjects we would all be interested in. One thing - I always miss the TV movies & shows cause I'm too busy to watch TV in October, plus I never know when they are on......so to make it easy for us I found 4 links that house all the movies, specials & shows for the month. Thank You to the website that listed all of this in one place for us! Below is a quick trip click for each. Enjoy!

For Season 5 : Maggie Said, " The 1st episode back is so disgusting & so scary". She claims, "Its one of the scariest episodes ever. And you'll see stuff you can't unsee. You'll be crossing your legs & twisting your face away so you can only watch 1/2 the TV!".

How can this show get any more shocking? I can't wait! Tune in Sunday, October 12th at 9pm.

OMG.....there still so much to do. I got 1/2 of the Egyptian display up & quite a bit done on the Cadaver Cafe. At this point we are just pulling totes & placing each thing where it goes as we empty them. By Sat. I have to get to work on the Gypsy Tent & start stringing corn stalks on the back deck for the Witches Tearoom.

October 22, 2014

Todays focus is the Cadaver Cafe set-up & we found the coffin so we'll start on the Funeral Parlor. Once again I'm fearful for that Gypsy tent. The last time we put up a tent was the year Hurricane Sandy was passing through & we here in Linwood had wild winds, not only did it bend the frame but it blew the tent part into the next county, we never saw it again & it broke my oh so beautiful chandelier I had in the tent. So finally we have another tent & are going to make another attempt at getting the Gypsy tent in place. Hope Mother Nature can control hereslf this year.

Some Personal Thoughts for the 2017-2018 Season

I have always had a vision of what I'd like this haunt to become. There are so many wonderful ideas to make it much bigger & exciting. I really want to do this for my community, so people have a local place to come celebrate Halloween and whole families can come & enjoy themselves. Our biggest hurdle has been trying to find help. Halloween night has been rough to handle with just 3 of us, especially with having crowds of over 600 for several years and in 2012 we had over 1000 come through the house.

There are so many projects I started, but with my health issues worsening I just could not use my hands anymore so everything has just sat. Maybe we can find some people who want to help build it bigger. First is the re-construction of the cemetery, more fencing, building of the mausoleum, the hearse & replacing the wooden tombstones with real looking styrofoam made ones.

For some time I have tried to build the Mud Monks, 7ft. tall monks made of chicken wire & pvc pipe covered with monster mud, a concoction haunts use for various projects. Maybe this year we'll get lucky and can pursue some of these projects ....I sure hope so. Anybody interested please stop by the house. Thank You.

Please note some of the pages are still under construction, some have pictures but I will be writing text to add to them. Sets of photos will be included in the cooking section & that should be completed for the 2018 season. Still the recipes are there & some have pictures.

Collinwood 841 will be open this season.

Gonna leave these here till the 2017 season so I can find them again.

Reflections On Halloween 2014

Well Halloween 2014 did not happen the way it was suppose too. So we promised everybody that next year, 2015, we promise to outdo ourselves which means starting to make plans & work on projects right away. We had talked about perhaps moving the whole thing out of the house & into the yard with pop-up tents. After looking at the stuff we have in the house I think I would fear Mother Nature getting riled over anything, cause thats her personality & what if all this stuff got damaged.

So we have made our 1st decision for the 2015 season. The haunt will remain as is with the family photo's being taken in the Spell & Potion Room & we will simply add the pop-up tents outside. The plan was to move each scene in the house to a pop-up tent outside. Some of this stuff in the house takes a lot of time to set up. Can't do it all in one day if you have several tents.

Pop-ups will house new scenes. A lot of the stuff we have here never gets put up cause theres no room or we run out of time. I still have new stuff I ordered that has never come out of the box it was shipped in. Now we can take a little time as we put things away from this season & plan what will be going where. I put the stuff for scenes in marked totes, so when we unpack the tote tells what area of the haunt it goes to.

As soon as I have some time here I will add a new page titled "Planning & Projects", kind of a journal for myself so as to stay on track. We have some ideas down already but I think I may want to add some things too. I really like these butcher rooms, even tho we have small kids, we would set this off to the side with a walkway that post a sign to beware with the little ones. Something more scary for the adults.

We also want to do a little write up on the local Zombie Walk here in Salisbury. I met the people that run it, they're just great! I would like to start a Facebook page to solicit people for a zombie walk here on my property on Halloween night. Dead Ed's suggested thats the best way to get attention to start it.

Our Sincerest Apologies!

We are so very sorry we did not get the haunt completely done for the 2014 season. My illness had been acting up for months. We started decorating too late & as I got worse we just could not get done. It was very disappointing both for us & all of you, especially the many kids I talked too that were very disappointed. So we apologize & hope you will return to Collinwood841 next year & we can make it up to you.

Got 1/2 the Halloween dishes unpacked & into the china hutch & got the Halloween Village set up.

September 19, 2015

Today we start on the Spell & Potion room, ceilings are done and we're gonna finish the china hutch today.

September 19, 2015

A Crystal Ball has been mysteriously found in a local antique shop. It comes from a gypsy called Magda who lived on the Collins estate in 1897. It has a history from the Collinwood 841 saga. Hopefully through it we will find out more of this mysterious family.

Great News for the Walking Dead Fans!The Walking Dead show was renewed for an eighth season...so we have more to look forward to! In October of 2016 prior to the Walking Deads 7th season it was announced that on October 22, 2017, the 100th episode of the show will premiere and be the start of the 8th season.

Meeting Walking Dead actors Savana Jade Wehunt & Wallace Krebs was the most exciting part of my Halloween this year. I got to chat with them a few minutes about our haunt theme next year....Tribute to the Walking Dead. They were amazed when I told them we are building the entire cast.

Have completed cast list of who we are going to make. Will get done as many as possible.

Talked to some folks at the Zombie walk for info on props & a lady to do Zombie makeup.

Bought Machones sword, all her clothes, clothes for her 2 zombies & their faces & chains.

2017 Ok Trick or Treators.....full speed ahead!

The Above ENTER HERE link will take you into the web site. To the right is the 2018 PAGE.

Scroll down for more

Anyone have any used aluminum sheets we could have. Will pick up. Also any pvc pipe or fittings we could have . Also looking to rent for 24 hrs. an old winnebago motor home.Need corn stalks in the fall. Gotta a hospital gurney>>>>could we borrow it?

Well it was quite a shock last night as we finally, after months of waiting found out who Megan chose to make examples of. What will the show be like without Glen and Abraham.It was shocking the way the whole thing went down. The Talking Dead Show was wonderful afterwards and they had the whole cast on to discuss what had taken place in that episode. It really helped with getting through their deaths.

Our Christmas Salute to the Troops

Due to severe health issues since 2016 this years festivities will be cut back again due to illness and operations. We had 9 operations in less than 12 months between Jerry & myself. He has one coming up September 1st and in May of this year my husband Joe was diagnosed with cancer, so now we both have have problems. Last year they found it in 2 different places on me and this year in one place. They cut it all out so we pray it does not come back. Joe will be getting ready for surgery very soon. Its lung cancer and some additional problem from the agent orange spray in Vietnam.

Ok... so here is the news about "Tribute to the Walking Dead Halloween Doing".

We sincerely apologize that we have not been able to pull off getting this done for 2 seasons now, but with the operations and health problems it was just impossible. Most of the reason being the amount of building of sets and props we needed to do to open this event and the fact that we were in pretty rough shape the last couple of years, actually it is still going on. Sept. 2017, Jerry had another operation, Joe had an operation and Joe still has cancer surgery coming up.

The amount of work it will take to build the Walking Dead set-up is tremendous due to the fact that we would not be using any of our regular decorations but stuff had to be built. So it has now been pushed to the 2018 season. As I had mentioned before that we have to get this Walking Dead thing done because of the expense of materials to pull it off. I still have those 10 fish aquariums sitting in my basement. We thank you for your patience and understanding through this critical time. Hope you enjoy this years set-up.

September 15, 2017

I am starting today to make way in the garage and pull the Halloween stuff that is there. Will just start opening totes one at a time and gettin' it all up.

First 2 weeks of September

Been shopping for little things.

This is or next years display but we need the stuff as soon as possible to build sets.

September 15, 2017

Bought 3 old man masks to get the cemetery guys ready for next year, also got a kids werewolf costume to make the werewolf dad and son.